Alice Zheng

Cofertility is a human-first fertility ecosystem rewriting the egg freezing and egg donation experience. Our Freeze by Co platform enables women to freeze their eggs for free when they donate half of the eggs to a family that otherwise can’t conceive. For intended parents pursuing egg donation, our Family by Co platform serves as a more transparent, ethical egg donor matching platform. We are obsessed with improving the family-building journey — today or in the future — and are in an endless pursuit to make these experiences more positive.

Evvy is unlocking precision women’s healthcare through novel, overlooked female biomarkers — starting with the vaginal microbiome. Backed by leading healthcare investors such as General Catalyst, Left Lane Capital, and LabCorp, the Evvy team includes leading OB/GYNs and vaginal microbiome researchers with decades of experience at organizations like UCSF, Stanford, Harvard, Cleveland Clinic, and more. Evvy is one of the fastest growing women’s health companies in the US — enabling us to deliver innovative, high quality care while scaling novel R&D to unlock a new, data-driven future in women’s health. Evvy’s Vaginal Health Test is the first at-home vaginal microbiome test to use metagenomic sequencing to tell you what’s up down there, why it matters, and what you can do about it. Evvy’s larger platform is the first vaginal healthcare service to bring together state-of-the-art testing, precision clinical care, and 1:1 coaching to give women and people with vaginas the care they deserve. Through this platform, Evvy is building real-world datasets that can transform our understanding of complex female health conditions. Imagine a world where female health is finally understood: where risks are detected early and precisely; conditions are defined with specificity and nuance; and diseases are treated with personalization and care. That’s the world that Evvy is pioneering.

AOA Dx is leading a revolutionary breakthrough in early-stage cancer detection, leveraging the transformative potential of AI and our proprietary biomarker technology. At the heart of this innovation is our GlycoLocate platform, a multi-omics approach powered by lipids, metabolites and proteins. This platform is setting a new gold standard in the quest for life-saving early cancer diagnostics. We are now advancing AKRIVIS GD™, a cutting-edge liquid biopsy test designed specifically for the early detection of ovarian cancer.

Millie is a new kind of maternity clinic, built by moms and healthcare providers who have been there. We bring together collaborative OB/Midwifery care in a modern, tech-enabled clinic model extended with virtual care & remote monitoring, to set a new standard of care that improve clinical outcomes and experiences from conception through the first year of parenthood. Our first clinic is open in Berkeley, CA, and accepts all major insurance plans including Medicaid. Virtual care services are also available nationally through our website. We can’t wait to meet you!

Seven Starling is a leading virtual provider of womens behavioral health services supporting every stage of motherhood. Seven Starlings holistic clinical model combines specialized therapy, peer support, and medication management to effectively treat common perinatal mood disorders like postpartum depression and anxiety, with 94% of patients seeing a clinically significant improvement in their symptoms after completing the program. Seven Starling partners with OBGYN clinics across the country and leading health plans including UnitedHealthCare, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Aetna to make care easily accessible and affordable.

Eli is a womens health company on a mission to improve lifelong health by continuously monitoring hormones in saliva. Hormones impact overall health every day and at all stages of life. Yet, traditional testing methods and send-out tests only provide infrequent snapshots. In three simple steps, Elis at-home technology continuously provides personalized hormone profiles to transform how women manage their hormonal health in key areas like menopause, fertility, contraception, and endocrine conditions. This scientific and engineering breakthrough, resulting from years of R&D, enables Eli to fill a major data gap and provide people with the information they need to optimize their overall health from puberty through menopause and beyond. *Were hiring* so if you want to join us on our mission, wed love to connect! Check out our open roles at bit.ly/eli-careers or reach out at hello at eli dot health.

OCON Therapeutics develops innovative and safe intra-uterine medical solutions that are inspired by women’s bodies and anatomy, to better the lives of women everywhere. In the past decade we have developed the IUB™ platform, our proprietary intrauterine ball-shaped technology, utilising super-elastic alloy Nitinol to carry long lasting hormone-free contraception and other drugs. OCON’s first product, the IUB™ Ballerine®, is a CE approved copper-based hormone-free intrauterine contraceptive, effective for up to 5 years, and already in use by over 100,000 women in 24 countries, including EU member countries, South Africa and Israel. The Company is currently enlisting patients for its phase II clinical trials with the IUB™ SEAD, a disposable, point of care therapy for the treatment of abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB), affecting 25% of women in the reproductive age. The SEAD (Spherical Endometrial Ablation Device) is designed to be a pain-free, non-invasive and cost-effective alternative for aggressive, invasive, painful and costly ablation procedures hundreds of thousands of women currently endure. In addition, we are working on a strong pipeline of more IUB™ based drug products, using the frame for myomas and other uterine indications. OCON’s technology platform and products are protected by a broad portfolio of patents and trademarks.

AZ Strategic Advisory partners with start-ups, funds, corporates and nonprofits in womens health and healthcare AI. We work with leadership teams on fundraising (strategy and investor materials), competitive positioning, go-to-market and growth, narrative building and ecosystem development — bringing an investors lens, management consulting rigor, and clinical perspectives to each engagement. Contact: alice@azstrategicadvisory.co

Michigan Biomedical Venture Fund (MBVF) invests in and supports University of Michigan life science startup companies, including therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and health IT. Follow for posts about Michigan’s life science | medtech 🩻| biotech 🧬| digital health 🏥startup ecosystem. Join our virtual community of investors and advisors who can help advance impactful startups. Founded based on an initial gift from the Monroe-Brown Foundation, MBVF makes seed-stage investments and provides support to help companies reach key milestones and attract additional investors. This evergreen fund serves to strengthen the critical pipeline between research and the biomedical innovation life cycle, create broad clinical and economic impact through startups, and continue to attract world-class talent to U-M’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. This fund is exclusively for biomedical startups with U-M IP / license. Most applicants need to complete a translational program (including Coulter, MTRAC, NSF I-Corps). MBVF is a collaborative effort between the U-M College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE) and U-M Medical School’s Fast Forward Medical Innovation (FFMI).

Women’s health deserves to be front and center, and we’re here to make it happen. Foreground Capital is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage women’s health companies making care more accessible, affordable, and equitable. The founding team—Elizabeth Bailey, Stasia Obremskey, and Alice Zheng—have built one of the largest dedicated women’s health portfolios in the world, investing in two dozen companies transforming healthcare for more than half a million women across the country. The Foreground Capital team spun out of RH Capital in 2024. Foreground continues to manage legacy funds RH Capital Fund I and II. Sign-up for our newsletter here: https://foreground.vc/#signup

Cofertility is a human-first fertility ecosystem rewriting the egg freezing and egg donation experience. Our Freeze by Co platform enables women to freeze their eggs for free when they donate half of the eggs to a family that otherwise can’t conceive. For intended parents pursuing egg donation, our Family by Co platform serves as a more transparent, ethical egg donor matching platform. We are obsessed with improving the family-building journey — today or in the future — and are in an endless pursuit to make these experiences more positive.

Evvy is unlocking precision women’s healthcare through novel, overlooked female biomarkers — starting with the vaginal microbiome. Backed by leading healthcare investors such as General Catalyst, Left Lane Capital, and LabCorp, the Evvy team includes leading OB/GYNs and vaginal microbiome researchers with decades of experience at organizations like UCSF, Stanford, Harvard, Cleveland Clinic, and more. Evvy is one of the fastest growing women’s health companies in the US — enabling us to deliver innovative, high quality care while scaling novel R&D to unlock a new, data-driven future in women’s health. Evvy’s Vaginal Health Test is the first at-home vaginal microbiome test to use metagenomic sequencing to tell you what’s up down there, why it matters, and what you can do about it. Evvy’s larger platform is the first vaginal healthcare service to bring together state-of-the-art testing, precision clinical care, and 1:1 coaching to give women and people with vaginas the care they deserve. Through this platform, Evvy is building real-world datasets that can transform our understanding of complex female health conditions. Imagine a world where female health is finally understood: where risks are detected early and precisely; conditions are defined with specificity and nuance; and diseases are treated with personalization and care. That’s the world that Evvy is pioneering.